PSE’s Terry Drury Says to Always Have a Ground Blind When You Bowhunt Turkeys

Hunting Turkeys with Drury Outdoors

Editor’s Note:PSE has asked nationally known outdoorsman Terry Drury to give us his tips and tactics for taking a wild turkeys with his PSE bow.

A ground blind gives you so much more opportunity to move your bow, without being seen, than if you don’t use a ground blind. When you get ready to come to full draw, you can make that move much easier, and the turkey’s much less likely to see you, when you’re in a ground blind. I like a total concealment ground blind, and Big Game Treestands just has come out with a new total concealment blind that I’m really like. Too, Mark and I have five new prototype blinds that we’re testing this turkey season. These new blinds have blackout on one side of the window curtains, which means you can leave the blackout side down for several days or weeks. Then the turkeys get accustomed to seeing those black spots in the blind.

Hunting Turkeys with Drury Outdoors

When you roll the windows up, the inside of the blind is black, so the turkeys don’t see any difference in the way the blind appears with the windows down or the windows up. But, the windows are also reversible, so that if you prefer, you can have the camouflage side of the curtains facing out. These blinds from Big Game Treestands have vertical windows, which is much better for archers than horizontal windows are. I also like a total concealment blind, which enables you to stay out of the weather and breaks the wind. Too, you can move around in a ground blind, without the turkey seeing you. The blinds I hunt out of are big enough for a video camera and a cameraman, besides me. Another element I believe is important when you’re using a total concealment ground blind is to brush up the outside of the blind. We’ll put limbs, bushes and brush all around the blind, so the turkeys don’t just see a flat piece of material. When we go to a spot where we know there’s a turkey, we try to get there an extra 30 to 45 minutes early, so that we not only have time to set up the ground blind but also have time to brush up around the outside of the blind. You don’t have to spend a whole lot of time brushing up your blind, since once the turkey sees and focuses on the decoy, he’s really not that interested in the blind. This is one of the reasons you can use a pop up ground blind on a turkey, with a little bit of brush around it, and be ready to take that turkey. But, when you’re hunting a deer from a ground blind, you may have to leave that ground blind set up for a week or more and really brush up good around it.

Hunting Turkeys with Drury Outdoors

Terry Drury’s Calling Tip:
One of the toughest turkeys to take with a gun or a bow is a gobbler with hens. Often instead of trying to call the gobbler, we’ll forget about him and start calling to the boss hen in the flock. If she starts yelping and yelping aggressively, we’ll yelp even louder and more aggressively than she is. We’ll start calling on top of her calls, before she finishes those calls much like when a lady’s talking to a group of other ladies, and another lady in the group starts talking, while the first lady’s talking. That tactic usually makes both the ladies and the hens mad. We’re trying to make that hen so mad, that she wants to come over and scold us. If she starts coming toward us, we pour on the heat, calling louder and more aggressively than she’s calling. Then we can get her really mad by doing plenty of cutting and cackling. Wherever that boss hen goes, the rest of the flock, including the gobbler, will go. So, we allow that boss hen to drag the gobbler and the rest of the turkeys right in to our decoys and into bow range.